Non-Rent Monies

Here are variousblog resources related to non-rent monies and payments, for example service charges, fees, and other costs and charges. These can be directly charged or hidden away, and are important to know what you may have to pay or might be able to charge another property interest for.

When you’re progressing an important property deal, whether a sale of a flat or a letting of commercial property, all can be ticking along nicely until the world of service charges are discovered.

This is usually through solicitors as they weed through legal information on the property, but it could be another party like a managing agent or even an on-the-ball purchaser or tenant.

They’re the sort of charges that appear straightforward at face value. So much is paid every year towards communal running costs, maybe a shared entrance way in a block of flats or a rear yard at a parade of retail shops.

However, problems can appear when you talk about actual hard-fast accounts in detail. Suddenly these can be lagging, which means that...

Service charges can unfortunately get very confusing, even for the experienced property-management expert. There can be endless lists, costs, and accounts that seem difficult to understand within the context of the property.

Often the best way to begin unravelling the service charge mystery is to go back to the real basic principles of them, in order to see how the detail then reflects, or rather should, reflect this.

After all, they are supposed to be summarising the running costs of an actual property, which are then fairly shared out between relevant occupiers and owners.

Therefore here are 10 foundational principles of how service charges should be structured. These are for the more involved landlords, investors, and property managers...

This can be a real blow for those owning residential properties through a long lease with a landlord freeholder or management company behind the scenes, often in a block of flats.

The gist of your ownership is that you can let it out if needed, maybe a buy-to-let investment or you’re just moving out for a while, with the focus often just on the mortgage side of things being agreed. But then suddenly when the above ‘landlord’ gets wind of this they can suddenly be requesting hundreds of pounds to grant permission for this, often through strongly worded letters out of the blue.

However, the good news is that in the majority of cases this isn’t the case and can be a try-on to earn some more fees. And even where there is some...